A quick overview of artificial intelligence and expert systems

Artificial intelligence (AI) is almost a household word these days. There have been several conferences held in this country over the last two years on artificial intelligence and its applications. The international AI conference at Snowbird, Utah, in 1987 centered on AI applications in the nuclear industry. This paper serves as an introductory overview of the subject of AI for this state-of-the-art review of AI applications in the nuclear industry. We introduce the subject in a way that will be relevant to many people in the nuclear industry who have heard of AI but are not familiar with it and are looking for answers to several simple questions. We attempt to answer those simple questions here and prepare the reader so that he or she can appreciate the following sections on AI applications in the nuclear field. (orig./GL)